Yaya Touré is by no means the first footballer to have found that his club’s
birthday arrangements fell short of his hopes, as our trawl through the
archives reveals.

From a recorded interview with Wilf Mannion, circa 1995.

“I was 30 in 1948, not long after the end of the war. To mark the occasion,
Middlesbrough presented me with a plate of rock buns, made by the chairman’s
wife. I told them exactly where they could stick it. Rationing or no
rationing, Stan Rickaby got a banana from the club on his birthday, and some
of us had never even